“Submarines are designed so that they can travel completely submerged in water for long periods of time. One obvious requirement is that the sub must effectively keep water from leaking into its interior. If the design fails to meet this requirement by even a small margin, the entire sub and its crew are at risk….
Author: Alan
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Facebook URL
My Facebook URL is http://www.facebook.com/kaplan.alan. Friends, old school chums, and co-workers are welcome to view. Tags: Facebook
Word – flag ignore caps off
Today’s request was to set Word to ignore CAPs in the settings, but to make that change only one time. WordIgnoreCapsOff.vbs does just that. First it checks if Word is installed. Then it checks if the script has run before. If not, then the setting is made, and a registry entry is written. That way the…
Find Distribution Lists without a Manager
We have a mandate that all mail groups a/k/a distribution lists have a manager assigned. ListNoManager.vbs will give you the list. Rename from .txt to .vbs. Tags: distribution+lists, manager
Convert FLV files to WMV
The boss saw some videos on a government site that he wanted for people to see from a CD, so I had to download and convert the FLV files to WMVs. I used VideoLan to do the conversion. If you have not seen VideoLan, a/k/a VLC, you should make this part of your desktop. It plays almost…
Don’t forget the command prompt
I was reading my Windows IT Pro Magazine, and saw an article where they had an HTA file to map the next available drive. This seems to be a lot of work for something that can be done from the command line: Net use * \\servername\sharename /user:mydomain\myname For short term use, I prefer to use…
Locate User
If you are using NetBIOS over TCP, you can find the computer a user is logged onto with the command: nbtstat –a username That method is not effective for finding multiple sessions, nor does it work when you finally stop using NetBIOS. xFinger.vbs, by Gurgen Alaverdian was written with the interesting idea that you can find…
Heroes Happen Here
At my last IT meeting, we were given a Microsoft tee with the logo “Heroes Happen {here}”. I only wear it to cut the grass. Why? Because I work for Veterans Affairs where I see real heroes every day. Being a great Windows administrator may be worthy of recognition, but it does not make you a hero.
Converting Batch files to EXEs
A long time ago, I would compile batch files using BATCOM by Wenham Software. From time to time I still need to compile a batch file. I found a simple free converter, Bat_To_Exe_Converter.exe at http://www.f2ko.de/English/index.php. One of the nice things about this one is that it allows you to add an icon to the resulting file. …
Free Excel Password Remover 2009
When someone sends me an Excel spreadsheet with locked cells, and those cells contain errors, and they won’t unlock the spreadsheet or give me the password, then (after yelling and screaming) I just crack it. Stupid Excel passwords are weak anyway. There is some nice free software to do this here: http://www.straxx.com/excel/password.html. Send the author…